Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Cinder: the beginnings of the painting stage

Cinder is a boxer mix whose portrait I'm working on, as a couple's gift to their son and his wife. I'm using a photo of Cinder in a window seat, full of light, with a neat pillow, and two of Cinder's stuffed animals, including her favorite (and mine too, I think): Foofer, the blue one (the one on the right - I know, I know, you can hardly see the stuffed animals at all at this point). This will be oil on canvas, 14" x 20".

This (above) shows the drawing transferred to the canvas, and Cinder, her stuffed animals, and the pillow outlined in sepia. Behind her, you can faintly see outlines of the windowpanes, and the shadows on the window seat. This is how the charcoal transfer looked after I traced the drawing (below) onto the canvas. As it was so hard to see, I painstakingly went over the lines with the sepia, keeping the original drawing right behind the canvas, as reference. Here (below) is the drawing:

And this is an enhanced photo of the drawing (same photo, but with the lines brought out):

Here's what it looked like, with the drawing taped up behind my canvas, as I was painting in the lines:

Reagan

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About Me

January 2007, updated July 2011: I am a baby-boomer artist with Northern California roots, back in Northern California at last. We moved here from L.A. in the summer of 2003. I was a farmer wannabe, and I have kept chickens (illegal L.A. chickens!), as well as cats, rabbits, mice, rats, a guinea pig; and we now have a dog. I volunteered for several years for our county shelter, walking dogs. For the last two and a half years I have been learning Maidu (one of three related dialects of the language of the indigenous peoples of this area) as part of Farrell Cunningham's classes. I do animal portraits nationwide, on commission. My own website is still waiting for me to set it up, and I have moved more intensively into my personal painting work: a mix of figurative (especially animals) with abstract expressionism, surreal elements, and dream imagery. My Painting a Day Blog (you may be looking at it; if not, see Links) is now up and running, as well as an Art Blog (you might, alternatively, be looking at this) with works-in-progress!!